Apple was granted the holy grail of smartphone patents today: a patent on touch screens.

Thats like owning a patent on water in Africa.

Apple was finally granted US patent number 7966578 nearly three years after filing for it. They've been awarded control over:

[a] computer-implemented method, for use in conjunction with a portable multifunction device with a touch screen display, [that] comprises displaying a portion of page content, including a frame displaying a portion of frame content and also including other content of the page, on the touch screen display.

If you read that as I did, Apple now has full ownership of the "capacitive multitouch interface," otherwise known as "the input method every smartphone manufacturer worth a damn uses."

Apple essentially can now sue the pants off all its competitors, which is everyone else in the mobile computing industry. HTC, Samsung, Motorola, and Nokia are all at Apple's mercy. The large settlement that Apple forked over to Nokia to license certain mobile technologies is going to look like a pitance compared to what Apple will be able to do.

In a worst case scenario Apple could eliminate capacitive touch screens from all their competitors phones, creating a shocking monopoly in the realm of touch interfaces. Or they could license out the technology, and make money off of every phone their competitors sell, and charge a premium at that.

Money may not grow on trees, but with this new patent Apple will likely run out of the trees necessary to print money before this well dries up.

God I hate apple more and more every day. Touch screens have been around WAY WAY before the iPhone. Why not patent the actual fruit known as an apple. If you eat one, you owe apple a fruit tax. FFS, this **** is ridiculous.

If you actually read the patent, you'd have known that this is only for the idea of using n number of fingers to move content inside an entire page and m (where m > n) number of fingers to move content inside a frame inside that page.

good God!! at this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple decided to buy out Microsoft after all the money made from this patent. Apple is pretty much sinking every other business weather it's smart phones, os's or pads. I bet Steve Jobs is on cloud nine from happiness. If for some reason Apple was able to buy Microsoft, I wonder what would happen.

Ohh, the ignorance in this thread is killing me. All these 13 year olds should really stop being Apple's tools. I find it hilarious how even the "writer" thinks that apple can sue the pants off of all the other companies. Yeah, no. If you'd actually do some research, you'd find that this is a very specific kind of patent, and is easily maneuverable by engineers/etc.